Innovation is not necesarily disruptive, even a small improvement is technically innovation. And personally this seems freakin great. Specially if it comes out at a low price like the original vortex guitar. did.

Loading sounds on SD, and a few trigger inputs. It might not seem ground-breaking, but this will be a versatile and handy device. Drummers can park one by their kit for special sounds, and other musicians can use it to trigger sounds.

So this thing has 8 pads on top, plus two pads via jacks on the back, plus a kick drum and hi hat pad input as well on the back. That’s pretty cool.

And it has programmable pitch, panning and reverb send per pad. Cool.

The SD card thing is the way to go. SD card forever. Down with all other formats. No doubt sony will introduce yet another new standard any moment now. Just say no to nonstandard and “new” proprietary formats! SD format forever!

Not sure about multisampled pads or how velocity mapping happens, if there is say mapping to filters or modulation of start time. Let’s look at the manual…

OK, we have 2 samples per pad as A/B layer, which are velocity range mappable.
Samples can be mono or stereo.
Kits can have up to 48MB of samples each.
There’s a sensitivity setting which presumably maps velocity to the VCA, and a pad curve setting to change the curve.
Each kit has a special mode of 5 hit hat samples whereby the hi hat pedal input, presumably a TRS jack and continuous pedal, selects which sample is used.
Mute groups are supported.
Has a metronome function and tap tempo.
Footswitches can be routed to kit selection, tempo setting, metronome activation, and all-notes-off.

Overall, I’d like to see a filter and start time modulation. However, at the stated price, and with the given features, and the big performance sized pads, this thing looks like a winner.